In this opinion piece I reflect on an inspiring 2019 Advance HE STEM conference in Birmingham. In doing so I identify the term pedagogy as one aspect which ran contrary to the noble aspirations of the conference. I outline my own perspective as both an insider and outsider in my role of a Teacher-Practitioner. I use this vantage point to outline…

"Remedial Trap." "Bridge to Nowhere." "Completion Divide." Such language used to describe the field of Developmental Education (DE), especially by those outside the field, is undeniably deficit oriented. In this manuscript, we initiate a dialog that critiques such portrayals of DE, particularly those that appear in…

Women and people of colour are underrepresented in physics in many parts of the world, to the detriment of the field. How do academics' beliefs about the role of 'brilliance' in career success contribute to these representation gaps, and what can be done to address them?

Many teacher education programs are committed to social justice. This commentary argues that gender-expansive education--teaching that opens up, democratizes, and complicates our understandings of gender, gender identity, and gendered embodiment in our classrooms in ways that make space for all kinds of students--must be meaningfully,…

The word "performance" is the basis for our medium. It's what we work toward, look forward to, and talk about with endless fervor. But does this word, this concept, this idea, actually stifle learning, artistic expression, and growth? As a director and professor of theatre for the past 13 years, I have watched this word become the knave…

I argue that it is degrading (and therefore insulting) for university administrators to refer to students as "customers" or "consumers" and to refer to instructors as "vendors" or "service-providers." There is nothing inherently wrong with economic analysis, much less with economics as an academic…

Across the nation, troves of college students disenroll prior to graduation; students who do graduate often leave campus still searching as if something is missing, inadequate, and deficient. Indeed, something is missing and unsustainable in this malaise. Drawing on Tia Brown McNair, "et al." (2016), who call for student-ready campus…

Suresh Canagarajah is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor and Director of the Migration Studies Project, Departments of Applied Linguistics and English, Pennsylvania State University, USA. Having a BA with a major in English from the University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, and a PhD in Applied Linguistics from the University of Texas at Austin, USA, Professor…

In this essay, we argue that teacher education is increasingly marginalizing the relevance of teacher subjectivity and recentering Whiteness, especially in its uptake of practice-based teacher education. Whereas teacher subjectivity has been pushed to the margins of recent conversations about teacher education--and has therefore narrowed our…

This statement affirms the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC)'s position that academic institutions have a responsibility to protect and support minoritized and marginalized faculty. The statement includes best practices to use in cases where minoritized and marginalized teacher-scholars are threatened, harassed, or…

As higher education professionals, we all wield power to shape the educational environment for our students. Conor P. McLaughlin and Christopher B. Newman use the metaphor of the superhero, whose power has the potential to be both democratic or fascist, to consider how we use our power as higher education professionals. More specifically, they…

In this interview, I speak with Gail Shuck about her continued commitment to seize upon what she describes as "kairotic moments" to build a network of support for refugee students, an underserved language-minoritized student population, at Boise State University. Gail describes how she has inhabited her administrative position to work…

In this month's interview, Kappan's editor talks with high school English teacher and researcher Lisa Scherff about the ongoing struggle over who gets to define the English language arts curriculum. Dating back to the creation of the subject area, more than a century ago, classroom teachers have advocated for a varied course of study that helps…

Language-in-education research can contribute to transformative progress toward educational equity and excellence. Although this assertion is likely uncontroversial within the field of language in education, agreeing on which types of research lead to which transformative progress is much less straightforward. The thought-provoking commentaries on…

The impact of neoliberalism on language education has recently attracted scholars' attention. Linguistic entrepreneurship is a conceptual lens through which neoliberal implications for language learning and use can be investigated. This commentary offers comments on common threads of themes running through the four articles in this special issue.…